My entire life, running and competing and doing well in athletic events have been an important part of my identity. My father was a competitive runner and a high school math teacher. I began to run and train with him when I was 6 years old. Growing up, our family trips consisted of traveling to Denver 3 hours away to run in road races together. My younger sister I led the Steamboat Cross Country Team to back to back state Championships in 1990 and 1991. My mother does her best to never miss a race and has traveled around the world to support my sister and I and now her grandchildren in all our athletic endeavors.f
I went on to run cross country, indoor and outdoor track at the US Air Force Academy, earning 11 Varsity letters and was Captain of the Cross Country Team my senior year. It was the other women on the cross country team and running together everyday that got us through the most challenging days. My sister followed me to the Air Force Academy and played intercollegiate basketball. While at USAFA, I earned my parachute wings, flew gliders, did survival training and POW resistance training.
. I continued to race after college, and because of an injury and having friends who were swimmers in college, started swimming and then doing triathlons. I competed on the All Air Force track, cross country and triathlon teams prior to medical school . During medical school, my social life also centered around running and fitness. A group of my fellow medical students and residents and I started the Catch 22 track club and together we trained for and ran countless local races, 3 marathons, 2 half Ironmans and 4 of us travelled to compete in our first Ironman at Ironman New Zealand after finishing all our medical school requirements in 2002.
As a tribute to its military beginnings, each year Ironman Hawaii spots are reserved for members of the military who have a separate qualification process. I was fortunate to be the female selected for the Air Force Team in 2002. I found out I got the spot 2 months before the race and trained for it while working 60-80 hour work weeks as a medicine intern at the Air Force’s Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio.
After my internship, I chose to serve as a flight surgeon for a few years, as an opportunity to see the world, fly in fast jets and to give me time to figure out what I want to specialize in. I volunteered to go to Kunsan AB Korea. Prior to leaving for Korea, I took a 6 week course in flight medicine. It was during this course that I met my husband, John Langell, who was taking time off from a surgery residency to complete a space medicine residency at NASA. As part of that program, he took the Air Force Flight medicine course. Two weeks after our first date, I was off to Korea. While there I served as the Flight Surgeon for the 80th Fighter Squadron, an F-16 Squadron in which I was one of two women. I loved learning and living the fighter pilot culture. I “earned” the call sign YODA, after an embarrassing incident when our squadron deployed to Malaysia and I may or may not have Yacked On a Defense Attache, fortunately this did not cause an international incident, but the name stuck. While in Korea, I also helped a group of 5 fighter pilots train for the Seoul marathon, and John travelled from Houston to run it as well.
I served 2 more years as a Flight surgeon at Travis AFB. While stationed there I was deployed to Ramstein AB in Germany in 2004-2005. I worked as one of the physicians present when military transport planes from Iraq and Afghanistan with injured service members were off loaded and transported to Landstuhl or the outpatient facility closer to the flightline and helped care for them until they were transported home.
After returning from Germany, John and I were married in June, 2005. We ran the Steamboat marathon together the morning of our wedding with some of our friends, and that evening were married in a beautiful outdoor wedding in my parents back horse pasture north of Steamboat.
I went on to do a residency in Anesthesia at the University of Utah. I have 4 step children who also moved to Utah and John and I had 2 daughters. I ran intermittently but between working long hours, coordinating child care, being a wife and a mom, studying, eating and sleeping, my athletic endeavors were very limited. As our girls grew up, our family activities began to become centered around physical fitness, running and triathlon.
Following anesthesia residency, I returned to the Active duty Air Force, and was subsequently deployed to Bagram, Afghanistan as an anesthesiologist. Several of my classmates and teammates from USAFA and medical school were also deployed at the same time. We began to run together at 5 am, with some other new friends we recruited. Our morning runs were the best part of my days there.
While at Bagram, the Boston Athletic Association, sponsored a Boston marathon, that started at 4 am, with the detonation of unexploded ordinance for the playing of the national anthem and for the start of my race.
After leaving active duty in 2012, I continued to run, and eventually got back into running marathons and doing triathlons. In 2018, I started to become frustrated because I was tired and stiff all the time and despite training hard, I continued to get slower and slower running. My Ironman time from 2018-2019 was 2 hours slower despite working much harder. I was frustrated after 2019, and decided to take a break from it.